This application is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/187,271, filed on Jul. 8, 2002, which claimed the benefit of an earlier filed provisional application Ser. No. 60/304,059 filed Jul. 10, 2001, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The disclosures herein relate generally to metal processing and more particularly to resurfacing the wear plate surfaces on a mill stand.
In the production of metal such as sheet steel and sheet aluminum, the metal is processed through a series of mill stands. Each stand includes rollers. The metal sheet is progressively reduced in thickness as it passes through sequential sets of rollers causing a substantial amount of impact and wear on the rollers and the supporting mill stands.
Wear plates or liners are mounted on the mill stand to limit wear to the opposed/vertical wear plate surfaces of the mill housing which supports the rollers. The wear plates are routinely replaced due to pounding and corrosion caused by the rolling process.
The housings also become worn and eventually must be refurbished. This requires a resurfacing operation on the surface of the housing which supports the wear plates. The resurfacing requires in-situ milling operations which results in production downtime. Traditionally, about 140 hours of downtime is required to complete these milling operations.
Therefore, what is needed is an in-situ milling operation which accomplishes the required resurfacing and substantially reduces the production downtime presently associated with traditional resurfacing.
One embodiment, accordingly, provides an apparatus for in-situ milling including a support. A milling assembly is reversibly mounted on the support in either of a first orientation and a second orientation, opposite the first orientation. The milling assembly is movable in a first direction and includes a cutting head movable in a second direction, perpendicular to the first direction.
A principal advantage of this embodiment is that in the first orientation, a first wear plate surface is milled. The milling assembly is then reverse mounted to the second orientation so that the opposed wear plate surface can be milled while the support remains in one position.